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Raisin Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, soup, raisins, almonds, lemon, vinegar, spices, and optional horseradish or rye crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raisin Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the butter or fat in a pan.

  2. Stir in the flour until it forms a smooth paste.

  3. Gradually add the hot soup, stirring constantly.

  4. Add the raisins, pounded almonds, lemon slices, and vinegar.

  5. Sweeten with brown sugar to taste.

  6. Flavor with cloves and cinnamon.

  7. If desired, grate in horseradish and add rye loaf crust.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter or fat
Browns in the pan to add a richer, toasted flavor to the base.
Flour
Forms a smooth paste with the fat that thickens the sauce as the soup is added.
Raisins
Add sweetness and soft texture as they plump in the hot liquid.
Pounded almonds
Add body and a nutty flavor that thickens the sauce slightly.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the raisins and sugar.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel note that rounds out the sharpness.

The step that matters

Gradually add the hot soup, stirring constantly. Flour must be fully cooked into the fat before liquid is added, and pouring the hot soup in slowly while stirring prevents lumps. Constant stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce thickens evenly and smoothly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, raisin, almond, vinegar, sugar, clove):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, raisin, almond, vinegar, sugar, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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